Small screen relegation strugglers ITV Digital could go belly up next week - and bring the entire Football League structure crashing with them.

The 92-team professional set-up has been tottering for years, and it is a tribute to the resilience and tenacity of the clubs and the supporters that they have somehow survived two decades of economic and cultural revolution intact.

But they are now operating in a much harsher economic climate and with little leeway for any more belt-tightening.

Now up to 20 clubs are seriously exposed thanks to the very people who promised to usher in a new golden age.

ITV Digital, the company that were set to finance a boom comparable to that in the Premiership, are trying to renegotiate their £315m, three-year deal with the Football League

They are threatening that, unless the clubs are prepared to take half a loaf, the troubled company will fold and the cash-strapped clubs will get nothing at all.

Not even crumbs.

The TV chiefs say they are not making as much money as hoped as fans are not watching in sufficiently high numbers, and therefore they can't afford to pay the League what they had agreed to.

Nice one. Imagine trying that with your bank.

Now they want the League to accept a collective £130m cut in the money they were promised over the next two years and instead take just £50m.

If not, then the broadcaster - which has cost co-owners Carlton and Granada £800m already - says it will fold.

And the two giant companies that own it insist that it is a separate entity and they will not be picking up the tab.

The League will have to join a long list of creditors owed cash by the firm better known for a talking woollen monkey than their programming.

The knock-on effect will be disastrous for clubs who have budgeted around - or already spent - the cheque they were promised.

The catastrophic meltdown could start next month when Bury face a winding-up order.

After a spirited fight by the fans they have put together a viable survival package.

That has just had a whopping £685,000 hole punched in it below the waterline - the second instalment of the ITV Digital money due in August.

Eight other clubs who are either in receivership, or very close to it, have been buying time on the strength of that expected windfall.

Now alarmist predictions are being made of a close season cull of famous old clubs.

Similar warnings have been sounded before, of course, but never before have clubs been dealt such a savage direct blow to projected income.

Former European Champions Nottingham Forest - who have battled against bankruptcy for two years - have stayed afloat this year thanks largely to the £4.57m they got this term from ITV Digital.

They have built a similar sum into their already creaking budget for next year - and it could now get arbitrarily slashed to just £916,000, a potentially fatal projected loss of turnover of a massive 32.6pc.

The First Division clubs with smaller operations are most at risk as they now stand to lose a bigger proportion of their total turnover.

Crewe, Grimsby and relegated Stockport have a annual turnovers of a shade over £7m.

They stand to lose a possibly insurmountable 60pc of total revenue.

Big names like Norwich, Sheffield United, West Brom and Portsmouth are also seriously exposed and could take a hit equal to 40pc of turnover.

They will suffer because, in a bid to compete, they have been forced to sign players on ever more ridiculous wages - wages which are fixed costs they can't reduce without widespread sackings.

Even lower down the league, where wage burdens are smaller, clubs are still at risk.

Third Division Rochdale have a turnover of just £1.7m but they stand to lose the vital contracted £458,000 share of the TV money, a 26pc slice.

Some clubs will now decide that, after a century of being at the heart of their communities, they simply can not make the sums add up and look at other solutions - groundshares with traditional bitter rivals, part-time football, selling up for housing and supermarkets.

These developments are sadly the inevitable results of football being transformed into a ruthless big business.

And not a very efficient one either.

With careful planning and long term investment - and better financial policing by both the FA and the Government - football should be a sustainable and profitable enterprise for all the clubs.

It has a dedicated, sophisticated and well-developed market, high-profile products and a fierce brand loyalty that the likes of Nike and Adidas would kill for.

But the bankers and the sharp suits behind operations like ITV Digital are only interested in one kind of result.

And the owners of most clubs will be well-insulated from the collapse too.

The assets will be well arranged to feather-bed them when crunch time comes.

As usual the real losers here are the fans.

They have been neglected and treated with contempt and ripped off to finance the dash for cash.

Yet ironically, no matter how much the clubs are willing to put themselves at risk to chase the TV purse, the fans are the game's biggest sponsors.

The money 'put in' by the great benefactors Sky and the football-friendly sponsors has indirectly come from our pockets - via subscriptions and premiums on the products it advertises - and into those of the players.

And, in a neat double whammy, we have been cynically asked to pay again through ever higher prices at the turnstile and in the club shop.

Now a sport and way of life that has been ticking over quite nicely - if sometimes shambolically - as a low key operation for a century has been sucked dry and run into the ground in no time at all by fly-by-night profiteers.